About - A Generous Portion

We love food. We love people. We love community. We love family.

We love to learn and that is what we are doing. We have always loved food, absolute foodies, but now we love to make it.

Now that we are in the kitchen daily, we never thought that food would mean more to us than just sustenance. Not only have we fallen in love with cooking but we feel that we have more so fallen in love with the connection that comes from serving the closest family member to a complete stranger, a thoughtfully, home cooked meal.

Join us at our table as we share with you a generous portion of love, encouragement, memories, and recipes that have shaped our family and those around us.

What can you expect from us?

Recipes that challenge your norm, some are quick and simple, others detailed and more challenging. We are always learning and we want you to do the same.
A pursuit to learn about other people and their cultures while sharing in their cherished family recipes with you.
Sharing ideas to encourage gatherings that make memories far past the meal.
Encouraging you with ways to let the words spoken at your table make a difference to those present, be it our children, our friends, or a stranger.

A bit more about us…

My name is Ziba and this is my husband Nathan. Add in our two kiddos, Jude and Ruby, our two doggies, and that is our family.

After leaving our hometown of San Diego, CA and landing in a small town in Pennsylvania, a love for cooking started to stew.

Nathan is a combat veteran, was a medic for the infantry, not squeamish about anything that I am completely squeamish about. It works! I, an artist by nature, studied Anthropology at UCSD and did not think that I would be exercising my knowledge with cultural studies in the kitchen. With a father from Tehran, Iran and my mother from Guadalajara, Mexico the love of food and culture is in my bones. I enjoyed homemade meals growing up and I find myself now thinking back to the many memories that were made because of the work of my mothers hands.

Though I ate homemade meals growing up, I never learned how to cook. So how can someone like me start a blog like this? I don’t understand it either but I fell in love with cooking and so I had to dive deeper. Every time I made a successful meal, it encouraged me. I may not have known how to cut an onion, but I learned. Or what the window pane test was, but I learned that too.

After moving to a small town, pregnant and hungry, I knew that if I wanted to eat what I was craving then I better learn to cook it. Then COVID happened. What else is there to do? With inspiration from Masterclass chefs and my Bake from Scratch magazine, I started to try and to learn.

A Generous Portion was born…

A Generous Portion exists to renew a love for cooking by nurturing a legacy that prioritizes joy back around the table.

I geeked out. I wanted to know how and why. Why do my eggs keep sticking to my stainless steel pans? Why do I need to use baking powder instead of baking soda? Why did my falafel just disintegrate in the frying oil (Whoops, I used canned beans)? How do I make homemade pasta? How long do I need to knead dough before it’s ‘ready’? What the heck is gluten?

So then I went searching and the more I searched, the more I found. I failed three times trying to make a sourdough starter. Browned butter? No one ever told me about browned butter! The possibilities are endless and the excitement that stirs up in me is overflowing my cup and I can’t help but want to share that with all of you.

My husband and I love people, we just do. Anytime we can talk to a new soul, we thrive. And what can be better than that? Being able to break bread with them. Food is the vehicle and our conversation the gas that gets it all moving.

You give of yourself in every meal and that gift of giving changes people.

So let this space renew in you a love for cooking, then sharing and ultimately giving. You give of yourself in every meal, even that peanut butter and jelly sandwich for your h-angry toddler, and that gift of giving changes people. We will give to you our stories, funny and difficult, and the recipes that have soothed us and ones we have laughed over during these times.

Now go and create that legacy and those memories for you and your loved ones and keep in touch while you’re at it.